How Should You Be Leveraging AI in Writing Blog Posts?

Tyler Scionti, Centori

Tyler Scionti is the founder and head specialist at the content marketing firm Centori. This is the second excerpt from a conversation we had about the use of artificial intelligence in marketing communications, including writing blog posts. Here’s part 1.

Questions and answers are edited for clarity and brevity. Watch the entire conversation here.

Dan: What are the primary AI tools that businesses are using today to write blog posts and other types of marketing communications?

Tyler: ChatGPT by OpenAI and Claude by Anthropic are the core. Then there’s DeepSeek, a new Chinese competitor. Google has Gemini. I mainly use Claude, and I use it pretty regularly.

Dan: What’s the right way to leverage AI to create blog content right now?

Tyler: I find that ChatGPT really excels in base-level knowledge — perfect for when you’re looking for a resource on “X” or a primer on “Y.” Suppose I’m trying to understand a complex financial topic, like the impact of treasury yields on the economy. I could read a 5,000-word article on Investopedia. Or I could just ask ChatGPT or Claude for a primer.

Having that primer allows me to ask pointed questions during my interviews with subject matter experts, which results in more interesting insights. It also allows me to be more efficient with the interviewee’s time. The text that the AI produces isn’t something I’d use in an actual blog post because it’s content that I would just skip through rather than content I’d read. But in terms of interview prep, these AI resources are very helpful.

Dan: At this stage of the game, do you think AI is up to the task of writing impactful marketing content? And how do you define success in this regard?

Tyler: My thinking on content has evolved from “Does it sound good?” to “Does it drive traffic, and does it generate leads?” There are essential building blocks and components to an effective blog post or web page. At this point, I don’t see evidence that AI can replace the good marketing thinking that factors in those components to achieve the desired end results.

I see a world where marketers who can effectively use AI will be like the superheroes of marketing. Because essentially with Claude, you have an army of interns who work for you now. That can be super powerful, but only if you’re a really good manager and you know what you’re doing.

What you need to do is think about how you’re building relationships with your audiences. I’ve had a lot of conversations with clients and prospective clients who say, “We used AI to write a bunch of blog posts that aren’t doing anything.” Well, they’re not doing anything because they’re not designed to. You have to understand your buyer’s journey and produce content accordingly.

Dan: What are some clues that reveal whether a blog post might be AI-generated?

Tyler: It’s funny — I see people post all the time on LinkedIn about em-dashes being a clear giveaway. But I’ve been using em-dashes for years, so I guess I’m a computer. Certain words, like “delve,” is another one. Of course, those are easy things to fix if you want to make the effort.

A more significant shortcoming concerns the imaginativeness of the content and how opinionated it is. A lot of these models are afraid to say anything too controversial. Their default is to only say things that stay within certain boundaries because there are limits and guardrails around these tools. And if you ask them to say something opinionated, they’re still going to use pretty soft language.

As people, we can say whatever we want — sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. But I find that AI content is often saying a lot of things without saying anything pointed. That’s often a giveaway because when you leave AI content alone and publish it as is, it’s going to be pretty bland and unimaginative. So when I see blog posts or content on LinkedIn that isn’t saying much of anything, that clues me into AI.

Dan: What types of clients perhaps can get away with publishing subpar blog content or not having a blog at all? 

Tyler: It ultimately comes back to, what’s the effort for the sale? I have a client that sells shoe insoles online. We did a survey and other research to determine how people buy insoles. We found that people buy them for specific types of shoes to relieve certain conditions or support certain activities. Based on that insight, we ditched their blog, which wasn’t bringing in any traffic, and built a website with categories mirroring the way people buy insoles.

We’re talking about a $30 to $40 pair of insoles. In that case, it’s a small buying decision and a narrow buying window. Someone is going to do a search like “insoles for Achilles tendonitis” and buy the first pair that they like. It’s all about convenience and specificity. A blog’s not going to convince you about much of anything in that buying decision.

Dan: Okay, so that’s a B2C, relatively inexpensive buying scenario. Take me through a more complex buying scenario on the B2B side.

Tyler: Let’s say someone is buying B2B software. It’s probably a much longer sales cycle. The customer might have a problem in the day to day of their business but not immediately find the specific type of software they’re looking for.

That’s where content can really be helpful because it can answer a question, solve a problem and open the prospect’s eyes to the solutions available — all of which supports that buying journey from the top of funnel, where they’re not problem-aware, down to where they are solution-aware.

This also goes for financial services. Someone is looking to entrust their life savings with an institution. They need a lot of convincing that they’re making the right decision. That’s where content can be really helpful in brand building. That power is the inverse if it’s bad content because that will turn off the prospect. They might get three seconds into the post, leave and end up on a competitor site and into their funnel.

In the end, it depends on the dollar amount that someone is spending and the amount of care they put into the purchase. Content can be helpful in building trust and a relationship, or it can end the relationship. There’s a lot more power than people might think that comes with publishing a blog post.

Check out part 3 of this series, coming soon.